Fake and low-quality medicinal drugs are threatening progress made in fighting HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis, according to a collection of 17 scientific studies published at once to highlight the issue.

Those conclusions, and more, were part of the 17 articles
published to call attention to global drug standards and ways to
combat the proliferation of damaging medicines, especially in
low- to mid-income nations.

Packaged together in a journal supplement under the title,
“The Global Pandemic of Falsified Medicines: Laboratory and
Field Innovations and Policy Perspectives,” the articles will be
published online by The American Journal of Tropical Medicine
and Hygiene.

“The pandemic of falsified and substandard medicines is
pervasive and underestimated, particularly in low- and
middle-income countries where drug regulatory systems are weak or
non-existent, as shown by field studies in the supplement,”said Jim
Herrington, PhD., MPH, co-editor of the journal supplement and
director of the University of North Carolina’s Gillings Global
Gateway at Chapel Hill.

Former US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret
Hamburg, MD, wrote in introductory essay for the package in which
she pointed to globalization as a reason why false or low-quality
drugs have spread so virulently.

“Today’s medical-product landscape blurs the line between
domestic and foreign production, drawing attention to the need
for global quality and safety oversight to prevent patient
exposure to falsified products,” wrote Hamburg, now foreign
secretary of the Institute of Medicine.

Some of the published articles detailed new methodologies that
are helping to test drug quality, including examinations that are
useful in remote areas devoid of more advanced technology,
according to NIH.

The researchers called for an "urgent and coordinated
response" to address this pandemic. Suggestions included a
global pact in the same vein as the Framework Convention on
Tobacco Control, as well as stricter laws to fight and punish
peddlers of counterfeit medicines.